Smoking joints is a time-honoured way to get high. They’re versatile, effective, and taste great. However, many smokers are turned off by joints. It’s understandable – rolling joints can be intimidating, especially for new smokers.
You don’t need to be afraid any more. We’re here to help with our complete guide to rolling a joint. First, we’ll cover all of the benefits of smoking joints vs pipes. Then, we’ll outline how to roll the perfect joint with our step-by-step joint rolling guide.
Joints: Why Roll Them?
There are plenty of reasons to smoke joints. They provide the truest representation of a strain’s actual flavour. They’re also convenient and cheap – two huge factors for any cost-conscious stoner. Finally, joints are made to share. Passing a joint around at a party or gathering is a great way to make new friends, forge connections, and build community.
Joints Have the Best Flavour
First, they’re one of the best ways to experience the taste of a strain. As any experienced stoner will tell you, smoking joints will provide one of the purest flavour profiles you can get. While smoking flower from a pipe may sometime be able to top joints when it comes to flavour, that’s not always the case.
It’s true that smoking flower from a clean or unused pipe will bestow its complete and undulated flavour. However, bowls quickly accumulate tar, resin, and other byproducts of plant combustion. As a result, smoking a bowl usually involves tasting the leftover residue of multiple smoking sessions. In contrast, a well-rolled joint using quality papers will allow a smoker to bask in a strain’s distinct flavour.
Joints are Convenient and Inexpensive
The second reason for a smoker to choose joints is simple convenience. You don’t want to lug a glass pipe everywhere just to get high. Carrying a glass pipe around also invites the opportunity to forget it somewhere. At that point, you can either buy a new one from a head shop – or just head to your local convenience store and pick up some papers.
Joints are also cheaper than glass pipes. Some smokers may argue this point, saying that in the long-run, buying a single pipe is more cost-effective than buying pack after pack of joint papers. However, as every experienced stoner knows, glass bowls don’t live forever. As any lifelong smoker will tell you, glass pipes break with surprising frequency. Regardless of whether a pipe lasts a few months or a few years, on a long enough timeline, it will break.
Let’s look at a real-world example. You could buy a $30 pipe to serve your purposes. Or, you could buy a 4-pack of Raw Hemp Papers (200 total rolling papers) for $5.50. If you smoke 3 joints a day, every day, 200 papers will last you 66 days – just over two months. That means you’ll be able to smoke joints for a year for the same price as your $30 pipe, without any risk of breaking your smoking device.
Joints Build Friendships
Still not convinced? One huge bonus to joints isn’t a physical property. There’s something about hanging out with a new group of people and passing around a joint that sparks conversation and friendship. It’s intangible, although even new smokers can attest to its veracity. Although it’s impossible to quantify this variable like you can with cost, that doesn’t make it any less significant – if anything, it only increases its importance.
Rolling Joints: A Step-By-Step Guide
Rolling the perfect joint isn’t some secret, arcane technique. It’s fairly easy once you understand the process. Below, we’ve outlined what supplies you’ll need and an easy rolling technique.
What You’ll Need
Before you get started on rolling, you’ll need some supplies. Strictly speaking, you only really need weed and rolling papers to twist a usable joint. We recommend hemp-based rolling papers, because they won’t affect the flavour of your pot.
However, for perfect puffing requires a few more tools including a crutch and grinder. Crutches are small pieces of paper added to the mouthpiece of a joint to keep weed from passing a smoker’s lips. Grinders make it easy to roll a joint: the tiny specks of weed they produce roll readily into papers. Finally, you may want to use a pen some other and poking device to pack the weed tightly in your joint post-rolling.
How Much Weed Should I Use in My Joints?
The quantity question always comes up whenever someone is first learning how to roll a joint. There’s no general rule about how much weed to use in a joint, but it’s good to start with half-gram for a 1 ¼-inch rolling paper (the most common type).
Half-gram joints are easy to manage and rarely end up with a circle of stoners saying “nah bro, I’m good.” If you want to up your joint-rolling game, you can move up to king-sized papers. These types of joints are definitely made to share, and can easily hold a full gram or more.
Step-By-Step Joint Rolling Guide
First, break down your weed in a grinder if you have one. If you don’t, your fingers will suffice. Try to grind weed into as fine of a powder as possible – this will make everything easier in the long run.
If you use a crutch, now is a good time to make it. Business cards or other pieces of thin cardboard make great crutches. To make a crutch, fold the paper like an accordion. Then, roll a circle of cardboard around the accordion shape. Next, put your ground up weed into a joint paper. You can also add your crutch at this time. Make sure that the weed is evenly spaced throughout the joint in a line.
Now, it’s game time. Use your fingers to roll the weed and crutch back and forth inside the paper. This will create a cylinder of weed inside the joint. Once you have a nice tube shape, you’re almost there. Just lick the gum and roll the paper tightly so it sticks to itself. Surfaces are really useful for this. Once the joint is rolled, you can use your poking tool to pack in any loose weed at the top of your joint. Give your joint a twist at the tip to close it. Then spark and enjoy.
The Wrap-Up
Rolling a joint is like riding a bike: once you learn how to do it, you never forget. The rolling technique that we presented here is pretty basic, but it gets the job done. Once you master it, you can move on to more complex creations like cross-joints or tulips. Time bombs are another great application for joints: roll a joint and then pack it into a bowl. This way, when your joint is finished, it’ll spark your bowl automatically.
With a little practice, you can quickly become the main joint roller in your group of friends. Good luck!